Mentalwork

Mental Work at Mental Work Factory is a 2017 collaboration wibetweenth EPFL neuroscientist José Millán, curator Michael Mitchell and San Francisco-based artist Jonathon Keats. INT mainly worked on the technical and engineering side of it. This commissioned project featured machines whose movements could be controlled by the brain via wearable sensing dry electrode technology. It was exhibited at EPFL ArtLab (Lausanne, CH) and at Swissnex in San Francisco (USA).

At Mental Work, participants are invited to join the cognitive revolution through a guided, 60-minute experience, where they will move industrial machinery only using BCI (brain-computer interface) technology and their thoughts.

This factory of the future creates a platform where the public can examine how dismantling boundaries between art and science can help us imagine, understand, and prepare for the transformational potential of BCI technology. Which positive applications could emerge from this experimental project ? What could be the potential ethical issues raised by such technology ?